


Umarekawari

by ailes_de_cire



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gender Issues, Life/Death/The Universe and Everything, Not Quite an Original Character Insert, Not What You Expected, Reincarnation, Touches Upon Big Topics, mental health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:10:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailes_de_cire/pseuds/ailes_de_cire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you visit places angels don't exist and discover the chaos of the single mind against the fabric of the world, you get burned. </p><p> </p><p>The one essential curiosity left mostly unaddressed in the KHR universe is the burning question of Just How did Yamamoto Takeshi Develop His Personality Anyway?  What circumstances could possibly result in such an unnaturally calm disposition and obliviousness in the face of murderous hitmans and life-endangering situations day after day?</p><p>This fic takes that curiosity out back, beats it up and turns it inside out while deciding that the cliche of primarily male characters being universe-swapped into female bodies is incredibly sexist - it's about time a female manned up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Waremonochuui

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Katekyo Hitman Reborn, nor will I ever (as I am, unfortunately, lacking both the time machine and drawing skills to do so in the future).
> 
> Warnings: harsh language, a new take on reincarnation and the 'what happens next?' question, mentions of death (hence the reincarnation), mental health problems, slight reimagining of the characters, playing around with gender and well... probably some other things as well, but nothing I can think of off the top of my head.
> 
> Goal: To answer the question of how Yamamoto Takeshi developed his personality. What circumstances could possibly result in such an unnaturally calm disposition and obliviousness in the face of murderous hitmans and life-endangering situations?
> 
> Reincarnation is an expansive subject, and one that fulfils the human thirst for answers to the great unknown. Yamamoto knows more than most, and he's not telling. Warning: readers need an open mind, OC

There wasn't really anything to alert her that her life was coming to an abrupt end before it did.

She'd thought about it happening on a more rhetorical level, of course – like, would you be able to feel yourself hitting the ground if you fell from a very large height? Would you feel the bullet if you were shot? Would it really hurt a lot to die slowly, by being caught under something and suffocated? What would death feel like?

Well, she got her answer for that abstract question – which was so unbelievably not abstract any more it wasn't funny.

Drowning was definitely not a way of dying she'd ever desired to discover. Whenever she entertained those very stupid thoughts, out of boredom, morbid curiosity or any other means, she decided that she would definitely rather a method in which you wouldn't know you were dying until it had already happened – she'd never liked pain, or even the thought of pain. Hell, she'd never even gotten her fucking ears pierced she was so afraid if it!

You definitely knew you were drowning when it happens.

First, you don't realise it is happening. She'd always been a strong swimmer, and she could almost believe that it was her choice to stay under water that little bit longer, languishing in the feeling of weightlessness so unlike anything available on land.

And then, your throat burns, and your chest gets tight, and you point yourself towards where you can see light above you, seemingly right there, just a few more inches and you'd be free to gasp that desperately needed breath of oxygen, and kick and move like you've never moved before.

All the while, something constricts your chest. Your struggles slow down, you can't get that breath out of water, you stare at the surface, and your vision (ironically) swims, blue-and-black, blue-and-black, blue-and-black-and-white.

You finally realise that it's hopeless, that you've been out of air for longer than you'd even thought yourself able to survive, limbs heavy but strangely light at the same time.

Then, you take a breath.

Since water is all that is available to you, you die.

The last thing your glassy, unseeing eyes register is that fucking surface, taunting you.

 

She didn't have a chance to do the ghost thing – you know, stare at your body, take up haunting the place where you died (well, she wasn't all that into the lake-monster shtick anyway... ocean monster just sounds worse), or see her family and yell uselessly while they ignore your ghostly presence.

She had no idea who'd killed her, or why, or what the hell kind of business she had being anywhere near that beach that day or why the hell someone had tied her to that lead weight and thrown her into the water.

It would have been nice to know – you know, something of a consolation prize like, 'oh, I've died, but at least I got some peace of mind because I know who I have to thank for it'.

Hell, she wouldn't be surprised if no one ever found her body; if sharks or something ate it so her parents, relatives and friends would never know what happened to her.

She had no fucking idea at all what had happened, besides the whole drowning thing; had no sense of purpose or individuality for a few vertigo-like moments. There may have been peace in that moment, but then It _loomed_ over her form, pressing, strangling, stifling – a giant of colossal proportions, Godzilla in a fucking weighted presence aimed right at her.

She was a blank slate, possibly existing, but probably not, able to feel something that was just so fucking terrifying she sympathised with all the spiders she'd ever squashed.

She was nothing, not even as tiny as a grain of sand against a beach – a decimal point of half a grain of the smallest possible sand, and there was just so much else that... well, that (thank fucking god) there are no possible words to describe it with in her language. If there were, she guessed you wouldn't have to be dead to feel it.

She reeled backwards – most likely on some level not explainable, in a way that had nothing to do with physical movement (huh, that's the _dead_ part, meaning no _body_ ) but also nothing to do with mental movement either (it wouldn't have done anything if she had, not with how fucking large the _Other_ is) and It was gone.

Or, more likely, she was.

(

) 

After that, she didn't know anything. Or at least that's what it felt like. After seeing, knowing the Other, and being ripped, torn, separated from it, she felt like she been locked in a cupboard, or a tiny bathroom with boarded up doors and windows, no light possible, no day, no change from everlasting midnight, curled up on her own.

A long time passes. Or passed. She can't quite be sure, trapped and locked and all alone, in a dark corner that she imagines must be only a little bit bigger than herself, keeping her away from the monstrous other.

She doesn't know if she is thankful to be apart, to still be herself in the face of the realisation of her infinitesimal... small-ness, she tried to explain to herself. It blisters her, to be away, but something so big... it had no conscious, she would have been swallowed into the whole, and although she didn't think she would mind, eventually, she did. And that was the problem.

At first, she doesn't really notice it. Or, maybe she does, but she ignores it as a passing fancy, hides away from it because anything more, bigger than herself reminds her of the Other and the horrorterrorpanicrun instinct is burnt into her being. She lives with the feeling of her death, the water crushing and caressing at the same time, thick in her throat, like it had never been before.

Things start swimming across vision that isn't vision – is it possible to see without eyes? She hadn't thought so – and she feels things; the softness of a blanket, a human touch, her throat finally giving voice to the screams that she has had no throat with which to voice. She doesn't recognise anything that she sees. Doesn't remember anything she smells, or can quite believe that she can remember what a gentle hand feels like, running soothingly over her brow, and she wonders why no one could have been there, when she died, to touch her softly like this, to lie, and say that death was peace because just maybe if she went into it believing that, it would have been true.

She wonders if she is the one that is unnatural – no, she knows that she is the one unnatural – and screams at the feeling, defying it because I am me and I don't want to be Them.

And then one day, on a day when she had not really realised that those feelings, abilities, of the five senses had been reaching her with more frequency, more surety, than ever before, suddenly a door – more like a cat flap, really, on the metaphysical level – opened, or released, and she crawls out of her darker than midnight, tiny prison although she has no hands or feet.

She sees an object above her, and it is something that is so completely foreign to her that for a moment she just watches, puzzling at what it could be. It was a face. A human face.

She stares at it, and she as she puts her mind to it, she can give it more attributes. An emotion – exhaustion, yes – colours the features heavily, black hair heavily spiked and dark eyes, mouth lined.

The one above her stares back, and she wonders what is happening.

"Ah, Takeshi-chan has stopped crying." The man mumbled to himself, and she could see him slumping forward in his stance, shoulders dropping.

She wonders what this means, and what is happening. Where is she? What is she doing?

But this thought draws her back to where she'd been before – dark, so dark, and the menacing calm-calm-soft of the water as she struggled uselessly, and she opens a mouth that she has only realised is hers to open, and screams, cries, shrieks out her torment, her grief, confusion, terror, relief, gulping great mouthfuls of air – air, oh precious air – and continues to do this, long after the man stops trying to quiet her shouts, comfort her, as he realises it is impossible.

She doesn't think she'll ever stop. She can't bring herself to, even though she knows that before she would have never done anything like this – now, she has seen the Other and been ripped from the Other and escaped from It at the same time and... well, she cannot voice anything, cannot find the words appropriate for her situation – doesn't even try.

She just cries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an experiment, first of all. I can’t say how far I’ll get into this story because of this. I mostly wanted to play around with the idea of being reincarnated – reborn, as it were – and also the gender switch theme. I’ve read a hell of a lot of stories, and I’ve NEVER seen a female be reborn as a male. 
> 
> It was frankly very weird to me. I mean, we’ve all seen the male Naruto or Harry or whoever dying and being reborn as a girl and having to deal with that (or various OCs), but I’ve never seen it happening to a girl. This character is an OC, but that shouldn’t really hold any weight over this story. I was just thinking... just WHAT managed to make Yamamoto Takeshi so freaking easy going, oblivious and yet driven? Sure, I could do this a normal-ish way, without the whole OC stuff factoring in, but I wanted to set myself a challenge – just how far can I push a reader’s (your) barrier for the suspension of disbelief? Probably not this far, I admit, but hopefully I can intrigue some people. 
> 
> Waremonochuui = Fragile, handle with care
> 
> Translations from EUdict dot com


	2. Saihen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We lose what we leave unwatched

_If you were to attempt to shoot a fish in a barrel, there would be a few immediate questions that come to mind regarding this act..._

The first few weeks were the worst. This tiny, fragile, **breakable** new body refusing to move to her will. Every attempt was met with clumsy, slow movements. On top of that, after a few minutes, a crushing exhaustion crashed down upon her mind that she was helpless to escape.

_The first almost asks itself. For what reason do you wish to shoot a fish that is trapped inside a barrel? Well, maybe the question before even that should regard at exactly which point Man looked at a barrel and said, 'now wouldn't it just be a great idea to shoot a fish in this?' to himself._

At the corners of her eyes, flashing and fading like insubstantial ghosts, she saw two adults rushing around frantically. When she was finally coherent enough – had enough control of her line of sight for a single, important moment – she saw exhaustion, worry and frustration within them.

_Unfortunately, for her, there was no such actual barrel in which a fish resided for her to shoot. In point of fact, she did not have the proper faculties required to shoot at fish in a barrel – namely, arms strong and long enough to support holding a weapon that shoots._

She could not halt the tears, did not even try. The tears and shrieking were something of a balm to her soul, even though it impacted on the two strangers that seemed to be in charge of her fragile existence. Every person, at heart, is selfish. That is one thing that she learnt most intimately in the first few, agonising, weeks of regaining a physical (fragile, hurting, tiny) form.

_There are many situations in life that can lead one to the point of contemplating life's existential questions – stress, frustration, catastrophes, natural disasters, unexpected deaths, insanity, making life choices… it was really a 'pick and choose the symptom' basket of partial problems._

She heard angry voices more frequently over the weeks – although she did not understand more than one in ten of the sharp words in the language, raised voices and words armed to hurt carried the same intention in any language.

_While the question of shooting fish in a barrel would hardly be classified as one of these questions asked during a crisis of the self, the reason for this extends from the same bastions of emotional response._

The woman, with her slanted eyes and pinched face, aimed those frustrated, angry words at her one time. The man, who she recognised now from slumped posture and a clenching jaw – that still seemed somewhat patient when regarding her – stood in between herself and the woman.

_In this case, she was slightly certain it was coming from the insanity portion – but most definitely with a side-order of 'unexpected death', even though that death was her own and not a family member's or something._

She knew, with all of her being, that the woman hated her. That acknowledgement went hand-in-hand with the slowly building awareness that these two adults guarding and surrounding her form were her parents.

_When we die, we cease to exist. All that remains of the person's physical presence are loose ends, relationships with the people around them, and leftover possessions/contracts/debts/money._

One day, after more slamming of doors and a racket of noise – which almost drowned out her own, eternal cries – the woman stalked out the door with something that looked like a suitcase.

_Before dying, she'd been existing with the impression that it would be alright – the whole, now nothing can touch you and you want for nothing because you need nothing because you are nothing._

The man, his posture defeated and slumped and frustrated – beaten and overcome with heavy emotion as he stood still roughly where she could see the doorway – stood for what seemed like ages, ignoring her cries as he had – they had both – been trying to do for a while.

The understanding that she had ruined these – adults, people, parents – lives was what finally gave her the awareness, the ashamed strength, to stop crying.

As disjointed as her awareness of passing time was, she saw the man – his edged, worn face – hanging over her form.

He wore a mask of bitterness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Saihen – second change, second calamity
> 
> I think this is the most realistic reaction a completely unrealistic situation could provoke in an individual that has just found themselves ripped from everything they know, as well as suffering the supremely limited sensory interactions infants are capable of. I also think that in order to gain such a zen view of life as Takeshi has during the KHR manga, he'd have had to have been dragged through some kind of traumatising experience that would give him perspective on events - or be mentally damaged, that's always another option. I like him alot nonetheless, which is why I've chosen him as my subject instead of trying something like this with Harry Potter.... hmm, I may try HP as well. Please leave comments, if you have questions.


End file.
